EARLY AMERICAN PORTRAITS
MR. and MRS. IZARD (Alice DeLancey)
By Copley, in Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
After the proclamation of peace the people were more prosperous and the portrait market was good. Not only family portraits were wanted, but portraits of political heroes. The commercial artist was there to take orders and deliver the goods. The goods he delivered were of a very high grade of workmanship. After the individual portrayal came the order for the historical picture, the celebration of the dramatic moment and the great event. Further than these two classes of pictures the earliest art did not go. The life of the day in all its human aspects of picturesqueness was ignored. The genre picture did not come until about the middle of the nineteenth century.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
By Copley, in Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
In England, Benjamin West, who had gone there about his twenty-fifth year, was painting biblical and mythological subjects, inspired by his stay in Italy; for Italy was yet the field for art inspiration. He received extended patronage from King George, and succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. “Christ Healing the Sick,” in the Philadelphia Hospital, and the “Death on the Pale Horse,” in the Pennsylvania Academy, are two of his best known works in America. The latter is an immense canvas, melodramatic in character, and carrying no direct message to modern observers. West seems to have wished to impress by size and industry. In regard to color he always remained a Quaker.